50. Cycles Ago.
Cycles Ago...
P risoner Ead screamed as her body was ripped in two. Counting Asherah as her own, this was the third child she’d brought to life, and it came the hardest. She’d expected such from a child born of evil, and she did not think she’d survive it.
She considered killing the babe. She could simply burn as it slithered from her womb and the weakling invader emperor would have nothing but a pile of ashes to hold in his arms. She did not suspect the son she bore from his assault would have the power of fire, as her full-blooded demon son did. As her dragon would, when it finally hatched.
The time of the hatching was close now. Ead had faith it was, for this cycle marked the egg’s tenth in the Mother’s Womb. It must be close, right? Throughout her pregnancy, Ead held onto this promise. She had to get out of this dungeon cell and back to her own people. She would Bond Asherah and wreak vengeance upon the Havards such as had never been seen.
But Ead had assisted in many births over the cycles, and she’d had one of her own. She knew when there was too much blood. It flowed from her hot and bright red, thin as water, unstopping until it coated the slab of dragonstone she used as a bed. The invader emperor watched it come from the other side of the bars in her cell window and did nothing.
Ead would not make it back to Asherah. And so, as the baby forced itself from her body, Ead decided to burn. It was the pain that made up her mind. It was the fury at the existence of the child that made her decide to do it before he slid free.
Only a midwife attended her. The woman was a prisoner herself. Proud horns rose from her head above a sea of rich, waving brown hair. “You are strong, my queen,” she murmured. “Just a little more and it’ll be over.”
The woman did not mean a few more pushes. She meant a few more minutes of bleeding out and too much of Ead’s life-force would have flowed out of her to continue living.
“What do you think awaits us on the other side?” Ead said. She didn’t whisper. She was still a proud, brave queen. Still the woman who’d brought the Rebirth of the dragon-gods. Calathan VIII, invader-emperor of Vaharilar, couldn’t take those things away.
“I believe in the old promises,” the midwife said.
Ead didn’t know her name.
“I believe that the dragons still live. Though their bodies have turned to stone, their minds slumber beneath us. When a Rider dies, her body lost, her mind goes to the dragons. That is what I believe,” said the midwife.
“And will we too be reborn, as the legends promise they will?”
At this, the midwife was silent. It was said that there were only twelve dragons who had ever lived. It was said that dragons were immortal. It was not said that people were, not even queens.
“It’s all right,” Ead said. She felt weak. The floor was sticky and wet. The baby wanted her to push, but she resisted, just to spite it. Yes, at any minute, she would burn.
The face of the emperor reappeared in the small barred window in the door of her cell. Ead bared her teeth, scowling at the evil who’d put this thing in her. He was a coward, unworthy of his victory over her. He had not even been the one to capture her in battle. It was Marcus Rosa, the tall, dark friend who fought beside him, who had succeeded in tricking and capturing her. He had knocked her out, and when she woke, Ead was naked and violated, trapped in a dragonstone prison that even she could not melt.
“Does the child live?” the coward at the door asked the midwife. Ead felt pleasure at hearing the eagerness in his voice. The emperor wanted this child. Ead would be pleased to deprive him.
“He’s still in her.”
Yes, the words of the midwife were true, but not for long. Ead could feel the child slithering towards her opening, no matter how she sought to hold him back and strangle him inside of her.
Beneath her, the stone itself began to quake.
The emperor swore at the door and Ead smiled. The Mother acknowledged her pain. She shook with rage and grief alongside Ead. Ead was not alone.
“Step back,” Ead said quietly to the woman, not wishing to be responsible for her death. The emperor would kill her anyway, Ead knew, but there was nothing to be done about that.
Ead untethered her mind. She flew away to the peak of the Mother’s Womb. She brought herself inside the womb itself, reaching out an imaginary hand to caress the surface of her baking egg. It was no longer firm as rock. It was soft as tanned hide. As if she knew that Ead said goodbye, the dragonet inside shifted beneath Ead’s palm. Ead imagined the baby pressing her wingtip against Ead’s palm. A hello, a goodbye, a thank you, an “I’ll miss you”—all were said at once with no words.
Then Ead began to burn. If she burned hot enough, could she immolate herself and the child both? She would love to leave nothing but ash for the invader. Perhaps the whole palace would crack from the quaking and her ashes would slip down deep into the Crust where the old gods slumbered.
The room became an inferno. Ead kept her consciousness inside the mountain. She didn’t hear the screams of the midwife as the heat of the oven baked her or the roars of the invader-emperor as he saw what she was doing. She didn’t feel the tremors that rocked the dungeon where she died, as if the Mother herself shook in fury at her favored child’s passing.
The blood below Ead bubbled and dried into rusty powder. Her flesh began to crumble, coal-red drying to ash grey, the flame going out. Queen Ead expended all her power and died like a hearth fire on a cold night.
When it was over, the shape of a body lay sketched in white ash. From the stomach of this body, an angry wail rose into the cool dark of the Emperor’s Dungeon.
Emperor Calathan had long ago turned away from the immolated woman in disgust. He’d retreated from the sweltering air near the door. He’d braced himself on the dragonstone walls of the prison so that he would not lose his balance as his world shook. But he turned back at the cry of his child. He was not stupid enough to press his face against the window; the stone room was still hot enough to burn him. He peered in as best he could and saw nothing but the ash of the demon queen’s body.
The child will suffocate if I don’t rescue him soon, he thought, but he did nothing. He couldn’t think of anything to do but wait for the stone to cool. Once it had, he rushed into the room. At the first touch of his fingers, the ash statue collapsed, revealing the child.
It was a boy. He had no horns, at least not yet. Emperor Calathan forced one of his eyes open to check its color and found it was not red. No slitted iris, either. Calathan was pleased by this. The blood of his line, the Dragonslayers, was stronger than the blood of demons. This proved it. Still, he’d have to watch the boy carefully for signs of evil. It was lucky the child was his second son, so he did not risk the boy inheriting the throne.
Emperor Calathan didn’t know when he decided to keep and claim the child. Maybe it was before he cradled the boy in his arms or maybe it was after. The child found his finger and held on tight. He was big for a newborn, and this made Calathan proud, too.
“You’re my blood,” he told the boy. And he went upstairs to inform his wife that she’d just given birth to a son.